Venting
Dear Airlines,
I am extremely disappointed in the service I have received from you lately. When you sell me a ticket for transport from point A to point B at time X, I expect that you will take me from point A to point B at roughly time X, plus or minus a few minutes. As often as not, this does not happen. Airline employees shrug and treat this as business as usual - no explanation or apology needed. Certainly you cannot control the weather. I recognize that. But organizing your business such that planes and crews are expected to turn around in so little time that any delay of any sort for any reason throws off multiple other flights for the rest of the day, or even the next day, is just a poor way to run a business. Weather happens somewhere in the US every single day. So do mechanical breakdowns and crew members who call in sick. Failing to plan for these possibilities IS your responsibility as a business. The fact that you cannot come up with a plane and a crew at your main hub, stranding an entirely full flight for hours and getting people in to their destination in the middle of the night, is frankly shameful. The fact that you don’t see any reason to apologize to your customers for this behavior is worse. People point out to me that this happens a lot and is 'normal'. The fact that it is common does not make it acceptable.
I am a business traveler. I spend a lot of time in airports and on planes and time is my most precious commodity. I am willing to pay more to fly with an airline I can trust to keep its promises and meet its commitments. I am still looking for that airline.